I'm doing a module at uni on the subject of Justice and have met a mental blockade yet again where I do almost every fricking time I encounter the words "ethics" and "morals".

How would you guys SIMPLY define each of these two terms?

Would ethics be a more personal form of morality that relates to the individual and said individuals immediate circumstance? For example, killing = bad. A basic element in societal morality. However, if I see a man about to murder an innocent child and I could not reach the said man in time and my only way to prevent this was to shoot the man in his head (said man is also wearing a full suit of body armor lol) then would this be an ethical issue and not a moral one?

I guess I'm sort of thinking along the lines that ethical decisions can be morally permissible although not morally right or bad.

(04-10-2016 03:56 PM)SunnyD1 Wrote: I'm doing a module at uni on the subject of Justice and have met a mental blockade yet again where I do almost every fricking time I encounter the words "ethics" and "morals".

How would you guys SIMPLY define each of these two terms?

I would think that "morals" are a personal belief, where as "ethics" are rules built and enforced on a community which are based on someone's moral beliefs, or an agreed set of rules negotiated by a select few representing their own moral beliefs.

Morality is understanding the distinction between right and wrong and living according to that understanding, and ethics is the philosophy of how that morality guides individual and group behavior. The two are closely related, with morality being the foundation of ethics.

I don't believe that a superstructure (corporation, family, religion etc.) has morals as an emergent property. Morals are personal.

Whereas we can have individual ethics and organisational ethics. Both of these factors drive individual behaviours. A collective of behaviours = culture.

Thanks I think that clears it up for me. I know it seems simple but I feel how dyslexic people must feel when it comes to words when it comes to remembering concepts like these. It's like I can study them write essays on them but after a couple month of not hearing the bleeding words my mind just puts them in the recycle bin!